Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google And International Business Machines Corp.(NYSE:IBM) Among The Tech Giants Seeking To Hasten Transfer Of Data

October 17, 2016Ruchi Gupta

Among the seven technology giants that have joined hands to launch an open specification are International Business Machines Corp.( NYSE:IBM) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google . The open forum is known as Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI) and which the companies have vowed to support is aimed at boosting datacenter server performance by up to ten times. It will be taking head on competition with Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), the world’s largest chipmaker that is well-known for protecting its server technologies.

The OpenCAPI Consortium connector has specifications that are expected to bring significant bandwidth improvements inside computers, alongside low latency open interface design specification. The rest of the participants who make this move a reality are Dell, Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MLNX), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE:HPE), NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) among others.

Computational workloads are growing

The growth of new technologies is likely to leave computers choking for more bandwidth. Processors, memory, and storage are getting filled up at a faster pace. The demand for applications the likes of virtual reality, complex scientific calculations, and artificial intelligence is growing by the day. Thus the graphic processors must be in tune with this demand. These are some of the problems that Google, IBM, Samsung, and the rest are trying to put to rest.

Brad McCredie, an IBM vice president, says, “We are going to need to bring new computer architectures, new technologies to bear to service the needs of these new modern workloads.”

Apart from this various companies are also seeking for more technical diversity perhaps in an effort to match what Intel does. The company does not only supply the vast majority of microprocessors used in servers, but it is also such a heavy influence of the technology that connects its chips with other components.

But the use of OpenCAPI calls for many changes on the computers

Apparently, OpenCAPI may not find its immediate presence in mainstream PCs or servers. A majority of them are running on x86 chips from Intel and AMD. On the other hand, Intel isn’t a member of OpenCAPI.

But even as promising as OpenCAPI may sound to be, computers will need many changes to take advantage. For example, the motherboards will need to have specific OpenCAPI slots, which come in at an additional cost. Nonetheless, analysts have applauded the new approach citing that it has more advantages in computing jobs than the standard connections that are commonly used in most servers.

All the same, it is not clear whether Intel would want to be part of this given that it has independent technologies the likes of QuickPath Interconnect, a coherent connection technology.